Peter Beinart’s “The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment” has generated considerable attention and controversy within the American Jewish community. I can recall few articles that have so quickly stimulated such vehement praise and criticism.

Despite all the attention this article has engendered, I fear it has become something akin to de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America: commonly cited, yet few have actually read it and even fewer understand it. For upon inspection, Beinart’s piece is little more than the common progressive assault on Zionism:

If only Israel would embrace more democracy, be more concerned about the rights of the Palestinians, and give back all of the West Bank, then we could enter a new era where Zionism would be a beacon to our children. A new, invigorated progressive Zionism would be embraced by alienated, young liberal and progressive Jews on our campuses and make peace not only a possibility but also a reality. Soon we will be dancing in the streets with Hamas, Hizbollah, and the Al Asqa Martyrs’ Brigades. Alienated Palestinian-Israelis (as they now prefer to call themselves) will rush out and sing HaTikvah instead of meeting with Hamas, spying for Hizbollah, and covering themselves in sack cloth and ashes on Israel Independence Day.

For Beinart, the younger generation is not embracing Zionism because Zionism has become a monolith controlled by an authoritarian AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) and a right-wing Jewish-American establishment. From Beinart’s perspective: there is no dialogue on Zionism; no criticism of Israel is permitted.

Beinart is simply Waltand Mearsheimer circumcised. Beinart’s conclusion about the Jewish establishment astonishes those of us who constantly run up against the actual Jewish establishment, whose vision of Zionism is to the left of even his.

Indeed, the real failure of the Jewish establishment has been its embrace of and commitment to something even more extreme than Beinart’s naïve progressive vision.

I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, where the Jewish Film Festival showcases anti-Israel propaganda; Berkeley Hillel sponsors Kesher Enoshi to promote divestiture from Israel and partner with the rabidly anti-Zionist Students for Justice in Palestine; the New Israel Fund sponsors speakers who are unrestrained in their Israel bashing; progressive congregations will not show Obsession because it is too pro-Israel; and a Berkeley Jewish congregation actively debates whether news of Israel should be omitted from its newsletter because it offends its progressive members.

The generation of young Jews on campus is not controlled by AIPAC’s alleged Zionist monolith, but is immersed in an environment dominated by progressive Jews who are as anti-Israel as they are anti-American.

From Hillel to the classroom, the progressive vision dominates. Whatever problems exist in the Middle East are Israel’s fault, be it Arafat’s looting of the Palestinian treasury or the surge of West Bank honor killings. If the Israel Defense Forces have one of the lowest rates of rape among the world’s militaries, then it is because the inherent racism of Israelis prevents them from raping Arab women.

If you are a Jewish student on an American campus, you are repeatedly and inexorably made to feel alienated from Zionism, if not Judaism, by other Jews. Beinart ignores this. Instead he parades a conspiracy theory of omnipotent Zionists stifling his vision for a progressive Zionism on campus. In reality, what stifles Zionism is the anti-Zionist progressives that control the campus narrative and play an increasingly prominent role in Jewish communal organizations.

And that narrative is, of course, detached from reason. What would come of the actual implementation of Beinart’s desires? To whom does one give the West Bank? Fatah’s leader Mahmoud Abbas is in the sixth year of a four-year term and has no legitimacy. He does not represent Hamas, whom the Palestinians have elected. His Fatah party can barely win a student election at Birzeit University, in his own backyard.

Gaza was Israel’s major test case of yielding completely to the Palestinians. Giving land for peace produced a deluge of Katyusha rockets and Grad missiles, which was responded to with a bloody incursion. Why would yielding the West Bank to the Palestinians produce a different result?

Israel is a society under siege. As such, it must balance freedom with order and concerns for democracy with concerns for security. To compare democracy in Israel with some idealistic — utopian — vision is an exercise in the absurd. Israel faces hostile countries on its borders and a large Arab population whose leaders increasingly express allegiance to those who would destroy the Jewish state. If you want to understand Israel, perhaps it would be best not to compare Israel to some democratic ideal, as Beinart does, but to America before and after September 11, 2001. Before the Patriot Act and after the Patriot Act. Or Britain before and after a series of pub bombings led to the Prevention of Terrorism Act.

Beinart’s essay resonates with progressive and even liberal Jews because his is the kind of departure from political reality that so characterizes the fictional world progressives and liberals have created. His self-indulgent, leftist rant neither understands the nature of Jewish communal organizations nor the existential threat Israelis face everyday.

Abraham H. Miller is an emeritus professor of political science and a former head of the Intelligence Studies Section of the International Studies Association.

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I find it surprising that this article by Beinart is given such attention.Apart from the fact that this is self-righteous self-indulgent crap, who is this man other than a left winger that the NYTimes thinks if worthy of printing. Sorry, but the Times is anything but a reputable paper in today’s world.
The truth of the matter is that most Jewish students pay no attention to pro-Israel or anti-Israel ministrations on campus. They are just like any other American co-ed going about getting an education and trying to figure out if they will have a job come graduation.Thay are also like other co-eds and are at the stage of life where they reject practically everything that their parents may think is important. It is not new it is the way of the world.
The reality is, is that the failure is the parents and synagogues of these children. There is no understanding of their heritage and the place of Israel in the world. My Temple for example, sets aside time on Yom Kippur for a Moslem-Jewish dialogue but has never had an Israeli consulate official to speak or interact with people. The majority of Jews of this country are extremely ignorant of their own ancestry and pass that ignorance on to their children. They are also so afraid of not being liked that they leave their children unprepared for the real world and to withstanding anti-semitic assaults.
It seems that as I have said before, liberalism has become the religion of the Jewish-Ameican cmmunity and that includes the inherent anti-semitism and anti-Israel bias. It is the fault of the parents and the synagogues who fail to teach our children the real world and who they are. That Hillel gives in to this self-hatred is another story and leaves one wondering just how complicit the Jews in America will be in their own obliteration.

Here we go again…as soon as you point out that obsessive criticism of Israel may be an outcome of left wing anti-semitism from the old Soviet Unions, you are chastised by a progressive who will to their last breath think their ideas are independent, fair and intelligent.. this is getting old and it no longer flies…especially the “this is getting old and it no longer flies” part.

Independent patriot, you have it exactly right. The leftist claim that Jews are abandoning Israel is a falsification of reality to serve Mr. Beinert and his ilk who have long ago abandoned Israel in favor of their “progressive” religion, which is really a totalitarian dream. Most Jewish kids are politically apathetic, just like most American kids of all backgrounds. At that age, there are other more pressing concerns. There is a hard left activist core within the Jewish community who are eating away at the community, particularly among the reconstructionist and reform movements whose attachment to Judaism is tenuous.

No, what is getting old and rather pathetic is filthy anti-semitism hiding as crude anti- Zionism. This no longer flies…

It is obvious that the degenerate, “regressive left,” hates both Israel and The United States because they are both the only true, liberal and progressive states in the world today…
…In the real, classical and best sense of those expressions, before they were corrupted by the degenerate left…

I guess it all depends on the kids you know. My children and their friends, all recent college graduates, seem to have their heads screwed on right. A healthy number of them have done short stints as non-combat military volunteers in Israel. One just emigrated–four months of Ulpan on an organic farming kibbutz in Galilee followed by graduate studies in Biblical Archeology at Tel Aviv University.

A second has recently finished a program with the State Department and is considering an offer for stationing in Iraq. Another has just returned from a year with a contractor serving the American military in Iraq and is headed into the Midwest for training preparatory to a job in Afghanistan. Another is a grad student in math who spends her summers working for Department of Defense.

I sat for about forty minutes one beautiful day day in La Jolla watching students stroll by on a main road inside the UCSD campus. Lining the opposite side of the road were student advocates for various causes, each behind a table covered with literature.

Closest to me were two male students representing a scuba club, a pretty female student in a scarf alone behind the Free Palestine table, and a mixed group of three or four Christian Evangelical students. I saw literature picked up at the scuba table and the Christian kids got several conversations going with passing students but the Free Palestine student got no business at all.

Miriam Rove, let’s try a simple test. Walk into a meeting of campus Zionists, and criticize something Israel has done or refuses to do. Then walk into a meeting of campus anti-Zionists, particularly MSA but any left wing group will do, and defend Israel against a false charge of genocide or apartheid. Do not raise your voice in either meeting, do not engage in personal attack, and do not speak when someone else is speaking. Then report back to us on which meeting you were able to leave without fear of violence.

Miriam, Anti-semitism is NOT racism.
Racism is usually about territory. The Klu Klux Klan would be happy if all American Blacks went to Africa. I don’t think the Klan would then get on boats to Africa to murder them.

Anti-semitism denies Jews the right to draw breath. That is why anti-semitism and anti-zionism are the same.
Anti-zionists want to destroy Israel so they can murder Jews with the same impunity that the Nazis did.
Anti-semitism and anti-zionism are two sides of the same coin.

True, but crisizing the Israeli government just because one is Jew should not make him/her an outcast. But levelling false and unjustified criticism at Israel, holding up Israel to unrealistic standards that no one can meet, and that no one else is asked to, demanding that Israel take suicidal actions that will result not in peace but in more bloodshed, demanding that Israel prove its bona fides and indeed its right to exist by handing its enemies a sword and then baring its neck because after all more must be expected from Israel, and then justifiying all of this because one is Jewish — should lead to being an outcast by all moral people. Sadly, it’s a pretty safe thing to do, even among Jews.

You say that criticizing Israel does not make one an anti-Semite; true depending on the subject of the criticism.

When the people who attack Israel for its “Apartheid” also spend an equal amount of energy and time doing the same for Saudi Arabia and other Muslim only countries- then they can be absolved of the charge of anti-antisemitism.
Until that time- they are simply Jew haters. How about you Miriam?

I have two points to make:
1. The paragraph quoted from Peter Beinart, the circumcised Walt or
Mearsheimer, reads like an exercise in a Social Studies exam from a
sixth grade class that I taught in the Oakland Public Schools. The
“if only Israel would…” is totally futile. If only Israel would
give up the West Bank? If only Israel would meet the demands of
Hamas and Fatah? If only Israel would cowtow to the needs of the
Palestinian people? If only Israel would give up all of the land,
there may be the chance for democracy to work? And the part about
Hamas and Hizbullah joining with the Jewish Israelis to dance the
hora and sing Hatikvah? This is wishful thinking at its worst – really
beyond a “naive progressive vision!”

2. You would think that all of the reiteration about what the anti-Israel
forces have been doing would become “old hat.” But, I think that it’s
a national imperative for people like Abe Miller to keep on hammering
in the nail of their discontent and actions. Our Jewish people need
to be hit even harder. Until it hurts? Maybe!

Thank you so much for the link to the Beinart article, which I hadn’t heard of or read until now. I think it’s a very insightful article that readers of this blog would learn something from if they actually read it.

Unfortunately, despite your lament that people haven’t actually read the Beinart piece, I’m not convinced that people commenting on your post have read the article either– e.g. Susan Somerville seems to think that your paragraph describing your take on the main messages of the article is a direct quotation (unless her comments were submitted as satire??).

No offense intended here, but your article is much closer to the kind of self-indulgent rant you that you accuse Beinart of producing! No-where in the article can I find Beinart advocating that Israel should give up the West Bank, and of course I can’t find anything reflecting some of the other, sillier statements you make in that paragraph (meant in jest I assume).

I think your post does a disservice to readers. It does not illuminate, it obscures, which can lead to more anger and hatred, rather than less. I think you’ve missed the point of the Beinart article, which is very unfortunate because the point he is making is a useful and important one.

As a young-ish secular Jew in Canada, I think that Beinart has captured the pulse of what many young North Americans feel about Israel. I grew up very concerned about social justice and human rights and thinking of Israel as a powerful and powerfully oppressive nation. When I encountered Jewish organizations that flatly denied that any Palestinian had ever been unjustly treated, this plain untruth simply led me away from supporting Jewish organizations and Israel, rather than bringing me into the tent.

It was only after a trip to Israel and some study of its history that I understood more deeply all the events that led to the creation of Israel, that the role of oppressor is a more recent part of Israel’s history, and that Israel is a very multi-faceted and complex nation with internally divided politics. As a result, my concern for Israel grew, but had I relied on mainstream Jewish organizations alone for information I doubt I would never have come to the same place of support.

So, I think if what you really want to do is protect a healthy Israeli state that is supported by North American Jews, you would be wise to actually learn from Beinart’s writing, which has obviously struck a chord of truth with many people (including me), rather than mischaracterize his points and rant about the article.

Is this the same Peter Beinart who used to edit The New Republic from 2001-2005? The same Beinart who wanted to “purge” Michael Moore and “Screw Em” Kos from the Democratic Party for their softness on terrorism? Who occasionally criticized Bush for being too hard on Isreal? This is amazing to me how Obama’s ascendency has absolutely neutered the last remaining hawks on the left.

yes, the same Peter Beinart. The main reason his bizarre essay is getting so much attention is BECAUSE of his prior tenure at The New Republic. Jeffrey Goldberg at The Atlantic did a challenging three-part interview with Beinart, who admitted the essay was meant for the New York Times, but allegedly rejected for “stylistic” reasons, not because of ideology.

For Beinart to publish such an essay in the New York Review of Books is a real coup for the anti-Israel left. Beinart continues his stubborn ‘dialog’ in his blog at The Daily Beast, where he is more open with his disgust with Netanyahu’s coalition partners: Shas, which represents the Mizrahi, mostly observant Jews expelled from Arab countries and their descendants; and Yisrael Beitenu, which represents mostly secular Jews from the former Soviet Union. His disgust with the ultra-Orthodox Parties is even more pronounced. Goldberg tried to get Beinart to understand why the Israeli electorate has shifted right since 2000.

Yet, Beinart the Liberal fails to see his disgust with more than 25% of Israeli citizens is racist and elitist.

To Beinart, like Mearsheimer these days, the only good Israeli is a secular Liberal.

The author’s points are, of course, correct. But, the larber question is WHY do people such as Beinart and the army of Jews who hate Israel do what they do? One answer is that they have made careers out of their criticisms, and are well paid for their propaganda. But, then, why that? Because the ultimate meaning of the battle is relgious: If Israel prevails, then Israelite religion/Judaism (not the same) is vindicated, and that cannot be allowed to happen. Thus, the hatred. And why do people hate? Fear.

I think that is right. It is not a matter of being bemused by that old ‘fossil’ as Bertrand Russell claimed Judaism was. It is a question of going to war against it, which is what leftists including leftist Jews do. Why? Because they perceive it as the enemy of Liberalism, which is an unchallengeable Orthodoxy they call ‘progressive.’ Because it also implicitly ‘vindicates’ Christianity, which is a double no-no (that is, the Liberal sees ‘orthodox’ Jews as believing exactly what Christians believe). The religious person is the enemy of ‘free choice’ which means, basically, ‘I have the right to believe what I want on any topic, won’t be challenged on my beliefs, and will demonize you if you disagree.’ So the Liberal is marginally more confident in his belief system than the Muslim, which is also why the Liberal so naturally defends Muslim outrage over cartoons and so on. Because getting insulted by ‘reactionaries’ naturally upsets the ‘enlightened.’

And so it goes. But beyond that Liberal Jews go to work with a fury on Israel or against the ‘settlements’ at least because they have a guilty conscience, and know that the peoplehood is calling. And if you can’t do it in Israel for whatever reason, it calls you to be a loyal, ethical person in Diaspora. And no Liberal can countenance a ‘reactionary’ value system. It’s just offensive…

“Beinart’s essay resonates with progressive and even liberal Jews because his is the kind of departure from political reality that so characterizes the fictional world progressives and liberals have created. His self-indulgent, leftist rant neither understands the nature of Jewish communal organizations nor the existential threat Israelis face everyday.

Can’t say it any better than that. Israel is a country that is confronting the reality that too many Jews live in an unreal versus a real world. Israel, however, is ‘real’. Ergo, those who prefer unreality to reality are its greatest enemy.

I have long warned about the damage caused by the naive Marty Peretz. He is adamantly pro-Israel—but also a committed left-wing cultural war ideologue. The New Republic is well known for its official pro-Israel editorial position and countless superb articles representing this point of view. Peretz hired Peter Beinart, however, some fifteen years ago to be one of TNR’s top people. This guy has virtually always been talking out of both sides of his mouth. The same can be also be said for probably most of the staff of TNR. At the very best, these individuals can be compared to the delusional Stanley Baldwin. They also have perhaps subconsciously bought into myth that the white Israelis are crapping on the darker skinned Palestinian Arabs. White guilt is a nonnegotiable doctrine of leftism. There is no longer a genuine and truly influential center left presence within today’s democratic Party. These people have been effectively marginalized.

The only thing the stupid Review of Books proves is that some Jews will fall for anything that they think sounds smart, or appears in a privileged place, like Mearsheimer at Harvard. Who cares about him? He’s a crank. Not even Arab nuts quote him.

Beinert is a square progressive. He is trying to reason with them, but he isn’t in on the game. It’s an irrational cult, you’re “in” if you talk like you are in.

Israel and the Jewish people in totality are in extreme peril. There is a conspiracy by very powerful elements in the world to utterly destroy the remnants of those Jews who have survived the twentieth century.

This worldwide conspiracy being orchestrated by an extremely powerful and influential group of genetically-related individuals (at least at the highest echelons) which include many of the world’s wealthiest people, top political leaders, and corporate elite, as well as members of the so-called Black Nobility of Europe (dominated by the British Crown) whose goal is to create a One World (fascist) Government, stripped of nationalistic and regional boundaries, that is obedient to their agenda. Their intention is to effect complete and total control over every human being on the planet and to dramatically reduce the world’s population by 5.5 Billion people. While the name New World Order is a term frequently used today when referring to this group, it’s more useful to identify the principal organizations, institutions, and individuals who make up this vast interlocking spiderweb of elite conspirators.

The Illuminati is the oldest term commonly used to refer to the 13 bloodline families (and their offshoots) that make up a major portion of this controlling elite. Most members of the Illuminati are also members in the highest ranks of numerous secretive and occult societies which in many cases extend straight back into the ancient world. The upper levels of the tightly compartmentalized (need-to-know-basis) Illuminati structural pyramid include planning committees and organizations that the public has little or no knowledge of. The upper levels of the Illuminati pyramid include secretive committees with names such as: the Council of 3, the Council of 5, the Council of 7, the Council of 9, the Council of 13, the Council of 33, the Grand Druid Council, the Committee of 300 (also called the “Olympians”) and the Committee of 500 among others.

In 1992, Dr John Coleman published Conspirators’ Hierarchy: The Story of the Committee of 300. With laudable scholarship and meticulous research, Dr Coleman identifies the players and carefully details the Illuminati agenda of worldwide domination and control. On page 161 of the Conspirators Hierarchy, Dr Coleman accurately summarizes the intent and purpose of the Committee of 300 as follows:
“A One World Government and one-unit monetary system, under permanent non-elected hereditary oligarchists who self-select from among their numbers in the form of a feudal system as it was in the Middle Ages. In this One World entity, population will be limited by restrictions on the number of children per family, diseases, wars, famines, until 1 billion people who are useful to the ruling class, in areas which will be strictly and clearly defined, remain as the total world population.

There will be no middle class, only rulers and the servants. All laws will be uniform under a legal system of world courts practicing the same unified code of laws, backed up by a One World Government police force and a One World unified military to enforce laws in all former countries where no national boundaries shall exist. The system will be on the basis of a welfare state; those who are obedient and subservient to the One World Government will be rewarded with the means to live; those who are rebellious will simple be starved to death or be declared outlaws, thus a target for anyone who wishes to kill them. Privately owned firearms or weapons of any kind will be prohibited.”

The conspirators know with certitude that the Children of Israel and the Jews in the diaspora are the only ones standing in the way of the completion of their nefarious deeds. We must remain steadfast in our opposition.

Israel and the Jewish people in totality are in extreme peril. There is a conspiracy by very powerful elements in the world to utterly destroy the remnants of those Jews who have survived the twentieth century.

This worldwide conspiracy being orchestrated by an extremely powerful and influential group of genetically-related individuals (at least at the highest echelons) which include many of the world’s wealthiest people, top political leaders, and corporate elite, as well as members of the so-called Black Nobility of Europe (dominated by the British Crown) whose goal is to create a One World (fascist) Government, stripped of nationalistic and regional boundaries, that is obedient to their agenda. Their intention is to effect complete and total control over every human being on the planet and to dramatically reduce the world’s population by 5.5 Billion people. While the name New World Order is a term frequently used today when referring to this group, it’s more useful to identify the principal organizations, institutions, and individuals who make up this vast interlocking spiderweb of elite conspirators.

The Illuminati is the oldest term commonly used to refer to the 13 bloodline families (and their offshoots) that make up a major portion of this controlling elite. Most members of the Illuminati are also members in the highest ranks of numerous secretive and occult societies which in many cases extend straight back into the ancient world. The upper levels of the tightly compartmentalized (need-to-know-basis) Illuminati structural pyramid include planning committees and organizations that the public has little or no knowledge of. The upper levels of the Illuminati pyramid include secretive committees with names such as: the Council of 3, the Council of 5, the Council of 7, the Council of 9, the Council of 13, the Council of 33, the Grand Druid Council, the Committee of 300 (also called the “Olympians”) and the Committee of 500 among others.

In 1992, Dr John Coleman published Conspirators’ Hierarchy: The Story of the Committee of 300. With laudable scholarship and meticulous research, Dr Coleman identifies the players and carefully details the Illuminati agenda of worldwide domination and control. On page 161 of the Conspirators Hierarchy, Dr Coleman accurately summarizes the intent and purpose of the Committee of 300 as follows:
“A One World Government and one-unit monetary system, under permanent non-elected hereditary oligarchists who self-select from among their numbers in the form of a feudal system as it was in the Middle Ages. In this One World entity, population will be limited by restrictions on the number of children per family, diseases, wars, famines, until 1 billion people who are useful to the ruling class, in areas which will be strictly and clearly defined, remain as the total world population.

There will be no middle class, only rulers and the servants. All laws will be uniform under a legal system of world courts practicing the same unified code of laws, backed up by a One World Government police force and a One World unified military to enforce laws in all former countries where no national boundaries shall exist. The system will be on the basis of a welfare state; those who are obedient and subservient to the One World Government will be rewarded with the means to live; those who are rebellious will simple be starved to death or be declared outlaws, thus a target for anyone who wishes to kill them. Privately owned firearms or weapons of any kind will be prohibited.”

The conspirators know with certitude that the Children of Israel and the Jews in the diaspora are the only ones standing in the way of the completion of their nefarious deeds. We must remain steadfast in our opposition.